


Gambit

by chellerrific



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3831826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellerrific/pseuds/chellerrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insects and snakes. Aizen makes the best of the hand he is dealt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gambit

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this forever ago and have just now decided it’s worth sharing. I know there have been Developments in the manga recently which make some or all of this inaccurate, so consider it an alternate universe in which things ended after Aizen’s defeat.

In a line of seductions, Kaname Tosen was one of his first, and one of his best.

To say Sosuke Aizen was good at reading people was an understatement. With one look they would spill their deepest secrets to him without ever having a clue. Tosen was easier to read than many, for all he believed he was not. His gentle voice and talk of justice did nothing to disguise the anger and resentment that rolled off of him in waves.

But that anger was unfocused, unproductive. He wanted to strike back but he didn’t know how. Fortunately, Aizen knew just how to use that, to focus that anger and turn Tosen into his own personal guided missile.

Not that Aizen had much of a choice in this instance. Tosen was, frustratingly, completely immune to Kyoka Suigetsu’s abilities. Either he came to Aizen’s side or Aizen would remove him from the picture entirely—and it was always better to use a tool than to break it, wasn't it? The latter was so wasteful.

And so the seduction began. Charm and soft words first, as he was with everyone else, but slowly, bit by bit, he let himself… “slip.”

_It’s quite a lovely lie they’ve constructed, isn’t it? The polished veneer that hides the rot underneath. Don’t you ever wish you could set fire to this place, let it burn till there’s nothing left but ash?_

And in turn, Tosen began to open up to him, a perversion of a flower turning its face toward the sun. He wanted to kill them all, burn them all, destroy them all. Soul Society as it stood was incapable of justice. The only true justice would come after it was gone, pulled up by its blighted roots.

It was easy to manipulate people, easier still to manipulate the ones who wanted it. Aizen was what Tosen wanted: a man who was offering him a means to his ends. It was possible that without Aizen, Tosen may have one day given up his desire for bloody vengeance—Aizen saw it in the softening influence of that dog-faced Sajin Komamura, felt it in Tosen’s genuine affection for the young Shuhei Hisagi. But Aizen was always there, whispering poison into Tosen’s ear, binding him to the fold with a silken rope of words.

_Our justice is the only true justice, Kaname. Never forget the shape of_ their _justice._

Tosen would not forget.

* * *

Gin Ichimaru would not be seduced. He was too clever by half, clever enough to know it but not clever enough to realize Aizen would always be more so. The last man to make that mistake ended up on the ground one unforgiving night, covered in bone and blood and dead without even realizing it.

Ichimaru was the first person he met besides that pathetically doomed Shinji Hirako who could read him at all. It would have been frightening were Ichimaru capable of posing any kind of real threat, which, just like Hirako, he wasn’t. Ichimaru may have been a duplicitous snake, but Aizen knew he was, and that eliminated the possibility he could ever win.

Besides that, he allowed himself a weakness: he loved Rangiku Matsumoto, would always love her. It was selfish, really, his version of love; it put Matsumoto second, always—whatever he may have told himself, Ichimaru cared about Ichimaru’s feelings first. But she was the one to whom he lashed those feelings.

Like Tosen, he also developed an affection for the boy who became his second-in-command, but also like Tosen, Ichimaru was willing to dismiss it in the name of his ultimate goal. Ichimaru may have winced a bit at stepping on Izuru Kira, but step on him he would, without hesitation.

Even so, Aizen would not have allowed someone with such obvious weaknesses to serve him if he didn’t make up for it in other ways. Ichimaru was an open book to Aizen, but he was utterly opaque to everyone else. Ichimaru shared Aizen’s gift for manipulation, showing a remarkable skill for keeping everyone off-kilter with a well-chosen word or a single ominous smile. What was more, Ichimaru _enjoyed_ doing it, enjoyed playing with people and watching the confusion and often chaos that followed. Nobody really trusted him, certainly they didn’t like him. He was a marvelous distraction, a ghastly harlequin of a villain on whom any sufficiently suspicious opponent could pin the blame for all visible cracks. Ichimaru may not have been as easy to manipulate as Tosen, but he was Aizen’s second-greatest manipulation of Soul Society.

(His first, of course, his crowning achievement in that regard, he felt would always be setting up Kisuke Urahara to take the fall for his Hollowfication experiments. It had almost been a mess, it _should_ have been a disaster, but Aizen and his accomplices all came out smelling like roses. He knew they would, because he knew Soul Society.)

* * *

The flames cleared and the fake Karakura Town constructed to “fool” him lay spread out below. He was flanked as always by his chosen subordinates, a young snake with an allegiance only to himself and a pitiful curvy blond, and a vengeful man whose greatest lies were the ones he told himself. Not the best tools one could hope for, but ones he had honed himself, to be used as much as possible and disposed of if it came to that.

And come to it, he thought as he took in the scene before him, it probably would. But it made no difference to him. When the dust cleared, he would be the last one left standing, with everyone else at his feet.

The way it was always meant to be.


End file.
